Persephone Jackson and the Lightning Thief
by Isabelle Hunter of Artemis
Summary: Okay, what happens when you get a fem Percy? Persephone Jackson! Pratically the same as the origonal Lightning Thief but if you guys like it, I'll do the whole series. Fem Percy I'm not good at summaries
1. Chapter 1

**Hi, guys! Happy New Year. Hope you enjoy 01.01.15**

_**Persephone Jackson and the Lightning Thief **_

**I am going to say this once, I do not own Percy Jackson.**

Chapter One- I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. If your reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. I envy you for being able to believe that non of this ever happened.

But if you recognise yourself in these pages- if you feel something stirring inside- stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before _they _sense it too, and they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Persephone Jackson- Percy for short. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid? Yeah, you could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan- twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to th Metropolitan Mueseum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know- it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were. But Mr Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this field trip so I had hopes.

Mr Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get into trouble. Boy, was I wrong.

See, bad things happened to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my forth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the picture.

This trip, I was determined to be good. All the way into the city, I put up with Nick Bobofit, the freckly red-headed kleptomaniac boy, flirting with me while his goons hitting Grover, my best friend, with their peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwiches.

But Grover was a boy AND an easy target. He was scrawny. He creid when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth-grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of that, Grover was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs.

He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. Anyway, Nick Bobofit's goons was throwing wads of sandwiches which stuck in his curly brown hair, and they knew I couldn't do anything back to them because I was aready on probation. The headmaster threatened me with death-by-in-school-suspention if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill them," I tried to calm me down.

"It's okay, I like peanut butter." He dodged another piece of the bullies lunch.

"That's it." I started to get up but Grover pulled me back down to my seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd deck Nick Bobofit's goons right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

Mr Brunner led the museum tour. He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathered us around a four-metre-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele_, for a girl about our age. He told us about thhe carvings on the sides. I was trying to lisen to what he had to say, because it was kind of intresting, but everyone around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other chaperone, Mrs Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs Dodds was this little maths teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last maths teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs Dodds loved Nick Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her finger at me and say, 'Now honey,' real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month. One time she made me erase answers out of old maths books until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs Dodds was human. He looked at me real serious and said, 'You're absolutely right.'

Mr Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Finally, Nick Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the _stele_, and I turned around and said,

"Will you _shut up_?" It came out louder then I meant it to. The whole group laughed. Mr Brunner stopped his story.

"Miss Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?" My face was totally red. I said,

"No, Sir." Mr Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the _stele_".

"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?" I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognised it.

"That's Kronus eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr Brunner said, obviously not satisfied,"And he did this because..."

"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronus was the king god, and-"

"God?" Mr Brunner asked.

"Titan," I corrected myself. "And he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronus ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronus a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronus, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eww!" said one of the girls behind me.

"-and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued," and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group. Behind me, Nick Bobofit mumbled to a friend,

"Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, ' Please explain why Kronus ate his kids' ."

"And why, Miss Jackson," Mr Brunner said, "to paraphrase Mr Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Nick hissed, his face even brighter then his hair. At least Nick got in trouble, too. Mr Brunner was the only one who ever caught Nick saying anything wrong. He had radar ears. I thought about his question, and shrugged.

"I don't know, Sir."

"I see." Mr Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Miss Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronus a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's lunch time. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses. Grover and I were about to follow when Mr Brunner said, "Miss Jackson." I knew that was coming. I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned to Mr Brunner.

"Sir?" Mr Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go- intense brown eyes that could've seen everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr Brunner told me.

"About the Titans?!

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will only except the best from you, Persephone Jackson." I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard. I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted:'What ho!' and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I never made above C- in my life. No- he didn't expect me to be _as good_; he expected me to be _better_. And I just couldn't learn all those name and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr Brunner one long sad look at the _stele _like he'd been to this girl's funeral. He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue. Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warning or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wild fires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nick Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's bag, and, of course, Mrs Dodds wasn't seeing a thing. Grover and I sat on the edge of a fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that _school- the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean- I'm not a genius." Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said,

"Can I have your apple?" I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it. I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I want to jump into a taxi and head home. She'd hug and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chai, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nick Bobofit appeared in front of me with his ugly friends- I guess he'd gotten tired of stealing from tourists- and his mean goons- Mike Smith and Lewis Scott- dumped their half eaten lunches on Grover's lap.

"Oops." Nick grinned at me with his crooked teeth. His freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos. I tried to stay calm. The school counsellor had told me a million times, ' Count to ten, get control of your temper.' But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching him, but the next thing I knew, Nick was sitting on his butt in the fountain, screaming, 'Persephone pushed me!' Mrs Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering.

"Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed him-" I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again. As soon as Mrs Dodds was sure poor little Nick was okay, promising to get him a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester.

"Now, honey-"

"I know," I grumbled." a month erasing textbooks." That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped." It was me. _I _pushed him." I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs Dodds scared Grover to death. She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr Underwood," she said.

"But-"

"You-_will_-stay-here." Grover looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, dude," I told him." Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs Dodds barked at me." _Now_." Nick Bobofit smirked at me. You could see the look in his eye clearly. _That's what you get when you regect me._ I gave him my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Iturned to face Mrs Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to hurry up. How did she get up there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counsellor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things. I wasn't so sure. I went after Mrs Dodds.

Halfway up the stairs, I glance back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr Brunner, like he wanted Mr Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr Brunner was absorbed in his novel. I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nick at the gift shop. But apparently that wasn't the plan. I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up with her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section. Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs Dodds stood with hr arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling. Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.

I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket."Did you really think you would get away with it?" The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil. She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.

I said, "I'll- I'll try harder ma'am." Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Persephone Jackson," Mrs Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I didn't know what she was taking about. All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't..."

"Your time is up,"she hissed. Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shrivelled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me in ribbons. Then things got even stranger.

Mr Brunner, who'd been out in the front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Perci!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air. Mrs Dodds lunged at me. With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen any more. It was a sword- Mr Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs Dodds spun towards me with a murderous look in her eyes. My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honey!" And flew straight at me. Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword. The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she was made of water. _Hisss!_ Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vapourized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

I was alone. There was a ballpoint pen in my hand. Mr Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me. My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something. Had I imagined the whole thing? I went back outside. It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nick Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from his swim in the fountain, grumbling to his ugly friends. But when he saw me, he said,"I hope Mrs Kerr whipped your butt."

I said," Who?"

"Our _teacher_. Duh!" I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs Kerr. I asked Nick what was he talking about. He just rolled his eyes and turned away. I asked Grover where Mrs Dodds was.

He said,"Who?" But he paused first, annd he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messig with me.

"Not funny, Grover," I told him. "This is serious." Thunder boomed over head. Isaw Mr Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved. I went over to him. He looked up, a little distracted.

"Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Miss Jackson." I handed it over. I hadn't realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said,"where's Mrs Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly." Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher." He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned.  
"Perci, there is no Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there never has been a Mrs Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?"

**Hope you've enjoyed it! Review of PM me if your confused**


	2. Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks Of Death

**A.U. Hi, guys! Sorry it's been so long since I've last updated! I'll probaly update this once every 2 months because how long it takes to write it all. So, onwards with the story!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson, only this Persephone Jackson.**

Three Old Ladies knit the Socks of Death

I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr-a hyper blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip-had been our maths teacher since Christmas.

Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho. _How rude_.

I did this everyday and every time they did that simple routine so I almost believed them-Mrs. Dodds had never existed.

Almost.

But Grover couldn't fool I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.

I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat and tears streaming down my face.

The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.

I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Cs to Ds and Fs. I got into more fights with Nick Bobofit and his jocks. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.

Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot.

I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded like a really good insult.

The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

Okay, I told myself. It's okay.

I was homesick.

I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.

And yet… there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. I worried how he'd survive next year without me.

I'd miss Latin class, too-Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.

As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.

I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.

The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room.

Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.

I paced the room, feeling like the world was getting token over by zombies.

I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes.

I will accept only the best from you, Persephone Jackson.

I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.

I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big, fat, red F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.

I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.

I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said "… worried about Percy, sir."

I froze.

I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.

I inched closer.

"… alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too-"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing her," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the child to mature more."

"But she may not have time. The summer solstice deadline- "

"Will have to be resolved without her, Grover. Let Persephone enjoy her ignorance while she still can."

"Sir, she saw _her_… ."

"Her imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince her of that."

"Sir, I … I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall-"

The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.

Mr. Brunner went silent.

My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.

I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.

A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.

A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.

Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn …"

"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.

I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.

Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm room where all genders can just, hang out.

Grover was lying on the floor, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.

"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"

I didn't answer.

"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"

"Just… tired."

I turned so he couldn't read my expression, started walking to my room and shouted good night, started getting ready for bed.

I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.

But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's … it's for the best."

His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nick Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with his lips.

I mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean …" Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

A tear slid down my face.

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.

"Right," I said, trembling.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say … you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be-"

"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me.

"Percy-"

But I was already gone.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.

The other girls were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a shopping trip to some other country. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.

They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.

What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.

"Oh," one of the girls said. "That's cool."

They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.

The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha-what do you mean?"

I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"

"Oh … not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"

He winced. "Look, Percy … I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"

"Grover-"

"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were over stressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and …"

"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:

Grover Underwood

Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800) 009-0009

"What's Half-"

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um … summer address."

My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."

He nodded. "Or … or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?"

It came out harsher than I meant it to.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I-I kind of have to protect you."

I stared at him.

All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.

"Grover," I said, "what exactly are you protecting me from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road-no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.

I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.

All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.

I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

"Grover?" I said. "Hey, dude-"

"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"

"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."

The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors-gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.

"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."

"What?" I said. "It's like a thousand degrees in there!"

"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic.

Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for-Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.

Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.

"Grover?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling me?"

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like … Mrs. Dodds, are they?"

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost-older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. And?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.

"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."

"What last time?"

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."

""Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."

This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.

No answer.

"Grover-that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"

He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.


End file.
